It has come to my attention that this subject has been blown clear out of proportion.

Please note that I am not trying to bash rms or the FSF. None of this article is trolling. It is but healthy debate, which is constructive.

I wonder if people have even read the article at all, or they are simply commenting for the sake of doing so and thereby jumping on the bandwagon. Is it wrong to disagree with the Free Software Foundation? I know for a fact that many of you aren't free purists, as I am.

Oh, and things like that drive me nuts. You call them hypocrites, then people point out the reasoning behind their use of debian and why it isn't hypocritical, and you do the "oh, they're attacking me because FSF is sacred, not because what I said was misinformed..."

If you honestly believe your aggravation is justified as indignation by claiming my opinion was misinformed, we have little to discuss.

The FSF is very strict about what they think is "truth" when it comes to digital liberation. They have rejected offers of both money and useful hardware from different companies in the past because either (a) the money was coming from a company the FSF has beef with, or (b) the hardware (presumably a server) doesn't support a free BIOS.

Simply changing their operating system to meet their own strict ideals should not be very difficult, given that there are free alternatives with server installs (e.g. blag, gnewsense, ututo, etc. all have server-esque install options.)

The bottom line is: When someone sets a standard for the general population, then fails to meet that standard of idealism for themselves (regardless of technical circumstances or lack of flexibility due to misused resources in the past) - it becomes hypocrisy. The word sounds harsh, but with a quick definition of the broad terminology, we see that the word is not actually harsh at all.

Quote:

Hypocrisy is the act of pretending to have beliefs, virtues and feelings that one does not truly possess. The word derives from the late Latin hypocrisis and Greek hupokrisis both meaning play-acting or pretence. The word is arguably derived from hypo- meaning small, + krinein meaning to decide/to dispute. A classic example of a hypocritical act is to denounce another for carrying out some action whilst carrying out the same action oneself.

I personally believe Debian to be free-by-default, as they guarantee so on their web site. Not the restricted and contrib repos, of course, but because they claim:

Quote:

We provide the guidelines that we use to determine if a work is "free" in the document entitled "The Debian Free Software Guidelines". We promise that the Debian system and all its components will be free according to these guidelines. We will support people who create or use both free and non-free works on Debian. We will never make the system require the use of a non-free component.

That's #1 on the social contract.

But, when you think about it -- the FSF probably has their own Debian repos set up somewhere. Nevertheless, they should either loosen their definiton of a free distro or switch to another Debian-based distro like gNewSense.

Not to put either Blag or gNewSense down, I'm running both at the moment, perhaps Debian is a more stable platform for a server. I think the fsf and rms find that they must be stringent in providing their imprimatur on a distro. But ultimately the goal is to use only free software. I think the attitude is that it's not wrong to use debian so long as you don't use the non-free bits. But since debian makes it relatively easy to download those bits, it can't give it's blessing to the distro. It's a fine point, but I don't think it's inconsistent.

Remember, their list is a list of distros they find that are Free and only have Free repos. Debian doesn't meet that as they have a non-Free repo. It's just a simple list of "these distros are 100% free". That said, they're not telling people /not/ to run debian or that debian sucks or anything like that.

Why they run debian is probably because it's what RMS used to run years ago (before any distro met their criteria) and it's a good server OS they can deploy and be 100% free. The other distros on their list aren't really server distros (well, blag can be, but I prefer debian myself for long-term servers).

It would be hypocracy if they were running non-Free software, not that they are running debian...

Again, to repeat myself, they aren't telling people NOT to run debian. They just have a list of distros that are 100% free. Debian has a non-free repo, so they aren't on the list. They are running debian with 100% free bits--no hypocracy. Read this sentence 10 times.

When I first read your ten lines I thought of Quine--now it's really being hammered home...

quine wrote:

“yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation” yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.

I once met Willard Van Orman Quine and got to talk to him for a bit. I asked him how the "theory of evolution" met Popper's standard of testability (quickly: science isn't proven, just puts itself at risk of being disproven) after he said he supported both evolution and Popper's ideas of science vs. pseudoscience. "Overwhelming evidence" was the response I gathered...

I think the attitude is that it's not wrong to use debian so long as you don't use the non-free bits. But since debian makes it relatively easy to download those bits, it can't give it's blessing to the distro. It's a fine point, but I don't think it's inconsistent.

Fine with me... But then, they should say so in the same page where they recommend the distros... Since they guide us to purity, they should state and explain why they are using Debian on there servers, without using the non-free repos. They should write down why it's ok for them and not for us.

I don't see that whole matter as inconsistence, but as lack of explanation. And it is important for the FSF to clarify its move as a bunch of human beings are closely following their acts & guidelines.

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